Personal Mythology of
Organic Poetry Workshop
Tuesday, May 12, 2009:
Week Six (Integration)
Week One (with links!)
Week Two
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
§
Discussion
of previous week. How’re the poems coming? Anyone want to read one or two? Do
you have info archetypes from last week? http://www.earthvision.info/archetypes
Index Cards?
§
Each
week we’ve looked at different senses, different ways of composing the organic
poem, different aspects of our own personalities. Hopefully by now you’ve had
the opportunity to experience the poem as a flow, a natural yet vigorous
experience. Maybe you’ve had things happen to you, or some intense dreams.
Certainly the content of your work has shifted by taking this workshop. The
stuff stir’d up by this activity can be quite primal, but I hope you’ve found
the process at least interesting and hopefully, invigorating. When one begins
to see one’s life through a mythic perspective it does not necessarily get
easier, but it is more rewarding and only numbing and denial can stop the
process.
I
am available to meet with you, if you’d like, answer an email, or talk by
phone. I have an email list, the E-Fishwrapper, which goes out when events
compel and time permits me to send one out. If you’re interested in this work
and work in this vein, please email me and I’ll put you on the list.
§
McClure on Projective Verse: (text, sound.)
§
McClure reading Dolphin Skull.
(Me & class continuing.)
§
McClure Personal Universe Deck
(handout)
§
Adding to your sense words, write 10 words that correspond to movement.
Also, ten words that reflect heroes, SHE-roes, power animals, Gods, archetypes,
etc. Things that represent your past, present and future; your good side as
well as your shadow side. These are concrete words that you think taste good and
it might be weird. Also choose one abstract word to finish the deal. Write the
words on the cards. You can make them more fancy later by adding some art to
them.
§
Exercise: Write. You can continue the sonnet
series, write the Father or Mother poem, use any of the exercises we covered in
class, or begin a serial poem about your mythic self, perhaps using Dolphin Skull as a model. Perhaps taking
off from the last image in your Mom or Dad poem. Or, start with a salient image
from your own name, or from an archetype. When you get stuck you can use one of
several prompting devices that we covered. To review:
- Alluvials. Read a previous stanza,
or two or three above where you are in the poem, or go all the way back to
the beginning until you get a hit.
- Quotes from other poets. You can
scan through the books up here, through your notes, or old poems. This was
one of Robin Blaser’s techniques and he died on Thursday and may he rest
in peace.
- Add some sensory input from the
world around you. Nothing happens by accident. Remember the cops were
arresting someone when we went outside to write that one week? In the
moment you’ll know whether it fits in the poem or not.
- Get an image from an archetype, or
- Go to your cards! Here’s where the
cards can be used as a sort of poetry divination. Remember McClure’s
repetition of Owls, Turquoise, Deer, Musk, Linen. Not just the word, but the
association it brings up. The feel of turquoise when the old Indian woman
in
§
Class
Evaluations
§
Reminders:
Write daily; Find a multi-decade project that will define you as a writer; look
for the mythic dimensions of intense events in your life; don’t settle for
being a positioner, be a real artist.
Upcoming
Workshop:
Investigative
Poetry (4 Hour class)
“News is the first draft of history.” Pity if it turns out to be Fox
News, eh? Well, don’t let those fuckers get the last word, do it yourself with
a template from Ed Sanders, Joanne Kyger, Lorine Niedecker or Allen Ginsberg.
We’ll look at some post-modern examples of history in verse form, do some
writing exercises to warm us up, then spend a good hunk of the time working on
a poem that includes history. Bring a book you’ve read (biographies are good,)
a news story, or a whole file of stories on a subject along with an open mind.
(Handout)